Oracle Corp.'s long legal crusade to get a cut of Google's Android revenue is drawing to an unsatisfying close for the company. A ten-person jury found today that Google did not infringe two Java-related patents that Oracle had used to sue the search giant.

That means Oracle isn't likely to get anything at all from the trial, other than a tiny amount of damages from one copied function. The trial dragged on for nearly six weeks in a San Francisco federal courtroom, and both sides hired some of the nation's top technology lawyers to try the case.

Judge William Alsup, who oversaw the proceedings, thanked the jurors for their hard work on the case. He noted that the six-week trial was the longest civil trial he had presided over in his judicial career.

Oracle may still get the opportunity to retry its copyright case (since the verdict there was a bit confused), but it's unclear when that will take place—or if it will get that chance at all.

While Oracle will almost surely appeal the patent verdict, the trial results thus far have been a huge win for Google. The company's Android operating system has been under a variety of legal attacks, and Oracle's legal assault was the most persistent and direct.

Since Oracle didn't win its patent case, and because the copyright verdict was muddled and inconclusive, there won't be a third "damages" phase of the trial at all.

Google's lead lawyer Robert van Nest said afterward, "We are grateful for the jury's verdict." Google spokesman Jim Prosser echoed the sentiment. "Today’s jury verdict that Android does not infringe Oracle’s patents was a victory not just for Google, but the entire Android ecosystem."

Oracle eventually commented as well. Spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger: "Oracle presented overwhelming evidence at trial that Google knew it would fragment and damage Java. We plan to continue to defend and uphold Java's core write once run anywhere principle and ensure it is protected for the nine million Java developers and the community that depend on Java compatibility."

The incredible shrinking jury

The verdict comes after more than a week of what must have been tedious deliberations. The jury barraged the judge with several highly technical questions about issues like the exact meaning of "simulated execution" and "array initialization."

The jury has also shrunk in size. It started out as a 12-person panel of seven women and five men, but two of the women were dismissed—one when she missed the first day of patent deliberations after a car breakdown, and another who left after falling too ill to participate.

API copyright issue lingers

The parties have already briefed the issue of whether an API can be copyrighted at all; today they added to that pile of paperwork, producing briefs addressing specific questions about interoperability.

Judge Alsup still hasn't ruled on the issue of whether APIs can be copyrighted at all. Additional briefing by both sides is due today. Alsup this morning reassured lawyers that his ruling on the issue will come sometime next week.

Promoted Comments

Definitely some major kudos to Judge Alsup for being level-headed, knowledgeable, and fair enough to smack down both sides when they got out of hand.

The fact that Judge Alsup did acquit himself so well will, I think, actually make it harder for Oracle to prevail on appeal. Oracle will have very little to point at, in terms of Judge Alsup's actions and statements, to accuse him of improperly conducting the trial or showing bias or anything of that sort which could be a basis for the Federal Circuit to review aspects of the decision as a matter of law (de novo) while ignoring the jury's findings of facts. Certain judges do certainly seem to get more of a benefit of the doubt when it comes to the Federal Circuit based on their competency in handling of patent cases, like Judge Ron Whyte who is also in the N.D.Cal.

But with any appeal to the Federal Circuit, the result all depends on who hears the case, and if the judges are patent-friendly (e.g. Rader, Newman) or patent-neutral; none of them are anti-patent.

Is it just me or does it seem like Oracle bought Sun just so they could do this lawsuit? Seemed like first order of business after the purchase.

I was always of the opinion that Ellison did this (suing Google over Android) as a favor to Jobs, since they were friends before Steve passed. That and Ellison will do anything if it means Oracle bringing in more money (ever own a product that relies on Oracle, and then have Oracle buy it and jack up the price 4x?).

Oh, boy. I wonder what Mr. Mueller and his website "Florian - Oracle's Sazzy Sidekick - (discuss) patents" will have to say about all this. Do I dare read his opinion or will I be hurt by the incompatibility of the RDF?</snark>

The most crucial question of the trial though is: can the SSO of APIs be copyrighted? They (the losing side) will appeal all and any other decision but can a ruling on that issue be appealed as well? I'm not too knowledgeable in US law.

That and Ellison will do anything if it means Oracle bringing in more money (ever own a product that relies on Oracle, and then have Oracle buy it and jack up the price 4x?).

Maybe I'm just a little naive, but I don't see how any of Oracle's recent activity w.r.t. former Sun stuff is making them any money at all. They're going to lose money on this trial, unless their luck suddenly reverses course. Just look at what happened to OOo. Oracle is throwing Sun properties away, after paying good money for them, and I really don't understand why.

Is it just me or does it seem like Oracle bought Sun just so they could do this lawsuit? Seemed like first order of business after the purchase.

Actually I think they bought Sun because they needed Java and couldn't risk someone else owning it. This also gave them the opportunity to sell the entire stack from the base hardware to the application layer which I think was also one of their goals. In my experience if you were running Sun hardware you were running Oracle's products so it probably seemed like a good fit.

Allowing the API to be copyrighted for a product positioned as an industry standard would be a very unfortunate choice. It is certainly reasonable for Sun's implementation of the services accessed through the API to be copyrighted. But it would be very anticompetitive to block others from doing their own implementation of those services.Six weeks may seem like a long time. But, the copyright case involving the product I worked on in the 1980's dragged on for at least three years. Even then it was settled out of court in private. So six weeks is pretty short. But, I guess with a jury trial there is more pressure on time.

The cynic in me wonders how much of this decision was motivated by the jurors possibly thinking, "If we rule that Google infringed Oracle's patents, THEN WE HAVE TO ENDURE MORE TRIAL ON THE DAMAGES QUESTIONS ... no infringement, let's get the hell out of here."

So this is overall a good end, though the dangling question of APIs being copyrightable or not is the most key part. As much as Oracle may not have liked Google's implementation of Java, their legal crusade and the numbers they kept on tossing out to influence the jury was disingenuous at best. Definitely some major kudos to Judge Alsup for being level-headed, knowledgeable, and fair enough to smack down both sides when they got out of hand.

This is kind of an interesting question, actually. With patent damage estimates falling to the tens of millions at the most (especially with one of the patents running out in a year or two, I think), I do wonder how far Oracle will push for a win just to have won. Those lawyer fees have to be racking up.

At which point some goober judge who doesn't know dick about tech will rule that Oracle is owed 1 billion dollars. I have zero faith in the legal system understanding how technology works. This judge was an aberration from the norm. He took his time, he made sure he understood the issues, and it didn't hurt that he also did some programming previously.

Definitely some major kudos to Judge Alsup for being level-headed, knowledgeable, and fair enough to smack down both sides when they got out of hand.

The fact that Judge Alsup did acquit himself so well will, I think, actually make it harder for Oracle to prevail on appeal. Oracle will have very little to point at, in terms of Judge Alsup's actions and statements, to accuse him of improperly conducting the trial or showing bias or anything of that sort which could be a basis for the Federal Circuit to review aspects of the decision as a matter of law (de novo) while ignoring the jury's findings of facts. Certain judges do certainly seem to get more of a benefit of the doubt when it comes to the Federal Circuit based on their competency in handling of patent cases, like Judge Ron Whyte who is also in the N.D.Cal.

But with any appeal to the Federal Circuit, the result all depends on who hears the case, and if the judges are patent-friendly (e.g. Rader, Newman) or patent-neutral; none of them are anti-patent.

This is kind of an interesting question, actually. With patent damage estimates falling to the tens of millions at the most (especially with one of the patents running out in a year or two, I think), I do wonder how far Oracle will push for a win just to have won. Those lawyer fees have to be racking up.

The thing is Ellison has an ego the size of a small moon....That's no moon, that's Ellison's ego. I could easy see him, if its up to him that is, saying damn the fees I demand this win.

Yes, by providing them with free use of internet search and free gmail accounts. They also threw in a map tool with street level images, I hear. Hopefully the jurors realized Google would use these tools to gather information about them.

But you can't hold it against them too much, Oracle tried offering them free use of Java. Not a great deal, I think the bundled freebies included a security hole or three.

If the jury result with regard to patents is all just a crap shoot as Mueller apparently is claiming I hope that some small component of the negative result was influenced by the POD and his poisonous reputation.

I mean if it's all luck and no reason with the result of juries in esoteric topics like patents, I can only hope that the reputation that precedes Ellison has him losing at every roll of the die.

If the jury result with regard to patents is all just a crap shoot as Mueller apparently is claiming I hope that some small component of the negative result was influenced by the POD and his poisonous reputation.

Mueller? Who's Mueller?

Ah, yes this "patent expert" paid by Oracle that has been totally wrong about the trial

Fun fact, before looking it up I implemented it myself on paper and apart from using shorter names and using throw Foo() it looked exactly the same. Wow I must be a genius to be capable of implementing such a highly valued function correctly.

Is it just me or does it seem like Oracle bought Sun just so they could do this lawsuit? Seemed like first order of business after the purchase.

Actually I think they bought Sun because they needed Java and couldn't risk someone else owning it. This also gave them the opportunity to sell the entire stack from the base hardware to the application layer which I think was also one of their goals. In my experience if you were running Sun hardware you were running Oracle's products so it probably seemed like a good fit.

Right. It was all about the hardware. Now they have a complete turn-key solution. People who think this was about Java must have not been following along.

Fun fact, before looking it up I implemented it myself on paper and apart from using shorter names and using throw Foo() it looked exactly the same. Wow I must be a genius to be capable of implementing such a highly valued function correctly.

Those 9 lines of code were already found to be infringing, out of 15 million or so. I do believe Oracle really, really wanted to ask for "damages" but ended up withdrawing the request.

But those 9 lines have nothing to do with this patent infringement portion of the suit, in case there is confusion.

The cynic in me wonders how much of this decision was motivated by the jurors possibly thinking, "If we rule that Google infringed Oracle's patents, THEN WE HAVE TO ENDURE MORE TRIAL ON THE DAMAGES QUESTIONS ... no infringement, let's get the hell out of here."

At which point some goober judge who doesn't know dick about tech will rule that Oracle is owed 1 billion dollars.

+1, sadly. All it takes is one judge at the next level up to completely misunderstand and throw all this progress out the window.

The appeals court will have a three judge panel, with decisions made by majority, so it will take at least two judges at the next level to reverse this decision.

Good to know that its not up to one person.

A further point of clarification, or confusion, is that I'm not sure exactly which appellate court would hear an appeal on the copyright decision. Patent decisions are appealed to the Federal Circuit, but copyright is still in the traditional Circuit court jurisdiction, so the Ninth Circuit would seem to be where that appeal would be routed.

BUT, the Federal Circuit gets to bundle up any other issues of law into their jurisdiction when the matter is inexorably linked with issues of patent law (or something to that effect). SO, one side's lawyers could ask the Federal Circuit to decide whether, in this case, to hear the copyright appeal because it is so critically linked with the patent appeal. I don't know if this legal question has been firmly decided one way or the other before, but the Federal Circuit has recently been dipping its toe into malpractice issues, so those judges deciding to also deal with copyright doesn't seem implausible.

If I were Oracle's counsel, I would not ask to have the Federal Circuit take up the copyright appeal, because the Ninth Circuit tends to be friendly to copyright holders (there is some influence from Hollywood in that). If I were Google's counsel, I'm not sure if the legal precedents in the Ninth Circuit are as much of a risk as the relatively unknown bias, if any, of the Federal Circuit with regard to copyright law.

Methinks they all had previous ICS experience ... and thus kicked Larry in his balls!

Wait till this actually becomes numbers in adoption of more android devices, then Sorry Larry won't be the only one smarting, Late Nut Jobs will also be ruing the day he became an all-controlling a-hole giving up his tinkerer days ... I always thought Larry and Steve were in this weird racket together. Oracle makes some of the worst software in terms of usability, Steve's toys are usable, but then you can't use them for anything worthwhile (at least not something that something half-priced and more compatible can't do). Oracle is dead-meat, and Apple's days are numbered.

This is kind of an interesting question, actually. With patent damage estimates falling to the tens of millions at the most (especially with one of the patents running out in a year or two, I think), I do wonder how far Oracle will push for a win just to have won. Those lawyer fees have to be racking up.

The thing is Ellison has an ego the size of a small moon....That's no moon, that's Ellison's ego. I could easy see him, if its up to him that is, saying damn the fees I demand this win.

Yes, by providing them with free use of internet search and free gmail accounts. They also threw in a map tool with street level images, I hear. Hopefully the jurors realized Google would use these tools to gather information about them.

But you can't hold it against them too much, Oracle tried offering them free use of Java. Not a great deal, I think the bundled freebies included a security hole or three.